Feather in My Hat or Cap?

The weather is warm, it's been all BBQ's and going out for lunch with friends or catching up on City and Guilds work and continuing with my work for the Material Girls next exhibition,  I need to finish it as soon as possible. A lot of the time it's been trying to keep myself and Betsy cool, our daily walks have been cut short when it's to hot, she loves  ice cubes and ice lollies. The best bit is spending  days at home  with the windows and doors open, I love the summer.

This weekend was the wedding of my nephew David, it was a beautiful occasion with lots of laughter and a few tears. David was  close to my Mum, his brother Matt (the best man) told a few stories of things that included her in his speech. My brother, me and our families miss her,  she would have loved to have been there to celebrate with us,  although Matt's stories were funny they made us all shed a tear or two. The day was  long and very hot, I along with some of the other guests suffered the heat and wore a hat, oh! how I love a hat........

I made David and Hayley a quilt for their wedding gift, it was a pattern I've used before, and I enjoy making it, but this will be the last one of this pattern I'll make. I don't like doing the same thing over and over again. Thankfully they were both pleased with it, I always have difficulty when I label a quilt I never know what to write! If your a quilter how would you label a wedding quilt? I started making the quilt over a year ago but only put the last stitch in two days before the wedding, that was sewing on the label.

This week it's going to be all about play dates, Betsy is going for a play with Dizzy, I think probably wednesday afternoon. Tuesday I'm going to visit a cousin, her daughter and grand daughter, hopefully I'll get a cuddle. On saturday my god son George is celebrating his second birthday,  it will be jelly and ice cream, cant wait. Hope paper hats will be involved, watch this space.......

Textiles On The Hill

There is a post on The Material Girls blog all about  the weekends event and my images are over there, so please pop over for a look, but don't forget to come back, I'd miss you! Apart from being busy I did manage to buy a few things as usual from that temptress Denise from Craft Arena, and who could resist buying a couple of Helen Wilson's prints from The Material Girls Shop. And then to top it all I just had to buy Lynda Monks book and some of her foils, a weekend of bliss spent with lovely people and it was so nice to meet up with old friends ( I don't mean old, I mean friends I've known for a long time, they could be reading this!) and family especially the young ones..... I managed to get a cuddle while her Mum, Dad, Nan, Auntie and Uncle looked at the exhibits.  There was time to speak to a lot of new people some who said they read my blog so hello there, hope you enjoyed the day.

Ella with her Uncle James

Two Prints by Helen Wilson

Lots of Inspiration in Lynda's book!

Today has been a chill out day, a visit to the shops a bit of ironing, writing the blogs. Also I find it hard to believe that today is the second anniversary of my Mum's death, sometimes it feels as though it was yesterday and sometimes it feels as though she's been gone for ever, especially when something happens that I would love to have told her. For instance she would have been there this weekend and enjoyed it all and I know she would have helped in the kitchen making tea.  Then last week my daughter got a new job, the job she should have tried for when she graduated from university. Mum would have loved it all!

I should say thanks for all you good luck posts and those of you that were working or also exhibiting at the weekend I hope you enjoyed yourselves as much as I did!

Memories

First of all I'd like to say thank you for all of your lovely comments. I think that in strange way it's helped me by blogging about what my family having been going through over the last few months, sorry if it's been depressing! There would be nothing gained by writing about Mum's last few days, except to say that any doubts that I had had about Mum going into a nursing home vanished into thin air, she couldn't have received better care anywhere else. There is a regret though the lunch with her friends had to be canceled, it should have been arranged a few weeks earlier.
An older cousin of mine phoned me to say how sorry she was about my Mum and that she thought my Mum was always great fun.She remembered Mum taking down the washing line to show us all how to skip, and how we always had lovely Christmas together at my house. There would have probably been about a dozen children and often some would sleep over so we would top and tail in the beds! I didn't remember the skipping but I do remember my cousin bringing her friends to my house and my Mum making face packs for them and I thought it was so 'cool' to have these older girls at my house, with their 'Dusty Springfield' hair and make up! Odd the things that stay in your memory.
A blog isn't quite right without a photo, and so another memory, my family were all for days out when I was young, picnics at Hatfield Forrest with games of rounders or trips to the coast. One trip to the coast ended up as a big disaster for me, but at least I had clothes on at the end!!! Super Gran, my brother and I were on the boating lake at Southwold, for some reason we kept changing boats from peddle boats to canoes and then back again(not sure where our parents were at this point). While swapping Super Gran started to do the splits with one leg on the shore and one in a boat, thought I'd save the day and stood up in my canoe which promptly overturned, the lake wasn't deep and I stood up covered in green slime,yuuk! I was fully dressed, I ended up wearing Super Grans clothes and she wore her swimming costume all day, good job she loves me? In 2005 we went on a trip down memory lane to Southwold, the lake wasn't as big as I remembered, but I wouldn't take a boat out, you just never know. As you can see from this photo Southwold and I don't get on this is a photo of Mum, Rachel and Me!!!!!

And of course the obligatory 'beach huts'